Riot veterans raise $ 37.5 million to launch Theorycraft Games

Industry veterans of Riot Games and other studios raised $ 37.5 million to launch their game studio Theorycraft Games.

The six-person studio is based in Seattle and Los Angeles, and is working on competitive and deep player-versus-player games.

China’s NetEase led the round, and other investors include NEA, Bitkraft Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners, Sisu Game Ventures and a small group of strategic angel investors. He will use capital to recruit diverse and targeted talents for Theorycraft team to develop a community-oriented PvP game, available on multiple platforms.

An AAA team

The leaders have previously worked at Riot Games, Bungie, Blizzard and Valve Software. They helped make games like League of Legends, Halo, Destiny, Overwatch, Valorant and Team Fortress 2.

Joe Tung, the CEO and founder of Theorycraft Games, led several billion-dollar, gender-defining franchises, as the former executive vice president of League of Legends, and he also served as executive producer on Destiny and Halo.

“We want to make 10,000 hour deep games that are better when you play with your friends,” said Tung in an interview with GamesBeat. “We want to make games that are theoretically worthwhile being designed by players.”

The Theorycraft team includes Michael Evans (a former technology leader at Valorant, Overwatch and Halo) as chief technology officer; former Bungie creative director, Mike Tipul, as creative director; Moby Francke (former art director for Valorant, League of Legends, Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2) as art director; and former League of Legends global revenue and finance leader, Areeb Pirani, as chief operating officer.

“When you think about the founding team, we work on some of the biggest games and intellectual property in the world,” said Tung. “But building something from scratch is the last frontier. There is always an un scratched itch in the back of your mind, about what you would do if you could go from zero to one. “

A good time to start

It is a good time to start a gaming studio, as there are more venture funds focused on games and other game investors than ever before. Tung said he knew 16 different game studios in Los Angeles with former Riot Games teams.

Tung said the team liked NetEase because it was willing to “grow with us” and free up the team with resources.

“They were true to their word,” said Tung. “When you’re playing a long game, when you’re going to a 1,000-hour game, that’s the only thing that matters, right? Will players return to that? “

Ambitious plans

Theorycraft Games has a mission to create deep games that give everyone the chance to connect, compete and delight endlessly with stories that put players right in the center. Theorycraft plans to find players where they are, regardless of the platform they play on, where they live or how much money they can spend.

The company is hiring for several positions. Tung said his team is open to hiring people to work remotely, wherever they are available. He said that the games Theorycraft is making will be natively multiplatform and, if possible, will operate on a cross platform.

Tung left Bungie in 2013 and went to work on League of Legends with a small team that moved quickly. He felt that he needed to “scratch the itch” to start a gaming company and that there was no better time to start. Then he left Riot Games in October and started to form the company with “an enormous amount of incredible talents who are willing to bet on themselves”.

He said the game industry needs game studios that want to serve players. He doesn’t see much value in creating a sequel every few years, although he was happy to see Riot Games branch out and start releasing new games. Now, at the age of five months, he said the team had a prototype that it displayed to streamers and others outside the company.

“We are building openly and getting a lot of comments,” said Tung.

Tung said he expects the team to have about 30 or 40 people when the first game hits the market.

“I come from a team of 600 people,” said Tung. “We spent a lot of time talking to companies with different models. We talked to the Supercell team and were really inspired by the fact that they can make their products with 12 people on a team. We find it very exciting that there are clear benefits to keeping the core development team as small as possible. “

But the team will rely on external partners for a variety of resources. Tung said he believes the next Disney will be focused on games.

“We believe there is unlimited growth and possibilities for a company that just wants to better serve players,” said Tung.